1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to movable closures generally and to protectors, in particular.
2. Description of the Related Art
Door guards and bumpers are primarily designed to prevent damage to an unattended automobile to which an adjacent motor vehicle has parked too close. When either the driver or a passenger opens a door of the adjacent motor vehicle to get out, the narrow edge on the opening door makes contact with the body of the unattended automobile, thus causing a dent or a scratch or both.
The cause of damage on the innocent automobile is difficult to prove and costly to repair. Such damages can be frustrating to the owner.
Door stripping currently on automobiles is insufficiently protective because differently sized motor vehicles, such as vans and trucks, make contact either above or below such door stripping. With the average high price of motor vehicles today, many purchasing consumers would welcome a reasonable and effective solution to this frustrating problem.
Although there have been several solutions offered to this problem in the past, none of them has been found either effective or sufficiently acceptable for use on all motor vehicles generally.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,216,367 issued to Hoblick in 1940 and relates to a protective cover for use in connection with members, such as a latch, projecting from the edge of an automobile door, but is now obsolete because the design of car doors has changed dramatically since 1940.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,678,232 issued to Barry in 1954 and relates to a retractable door guard that protects a large area of the automobile but it takes up too much room inside the door to be considered practical for modern motor vehicles.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,243,222 issued to Loughary et al in 1966 and relates to a retracting door bumper that is fairly efficient in design but covers too small an area to be effective. Also, it is cosmetically ugly.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,280,510 issued to Vaux in 1966 and relates to a retractable door bumper that is too complex. Also, it covers only a small area and the bumper can be seen from outside the automobile when the door is closed.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,473,264 issued to Holka in 1969 and was assigned to the Ford Motor Co. It relates to a door edge guard that is one of the better concepts but is also too small to be effective and may still allow damage to be caused at a point of contact above or below the guard.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,576,338 issued to Horton in 1971 and also was assigned to the Ford Motor Co. It relates to a door edge guard that, under the right circumstances, may be protective but is too small to be effective generally and would still tend to make a dent in any other car that would be contacted.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 3,879,895 issued to Hinderks in 1975 and relates to a closure member and protector that itself would appear to be effective by covering a large area but, as with some of the other prior art devices discussed above, it is too complex to be practical. Furthermore, the protector is not effective until the offending door is completely open and then it protects only its own door edge and not any part of the other innocently parked automobile.
Thus, it remains a problem in the prior art to provide a retractable guard that effectively protects the edge of a motor vehicle door from damage and also protects parts of an adjacent parked motor vehicle from damage caused by the opening door of the offending motor vehicle.